Funny how ya never know when ya wake up in the mornin' just where you'll wind up, later that day. For instance, if someone would have said to me yesterday morning, "You're gonna get stuck in a playground slide today ...." I'm sure I would have laughed, since it would have been difficult to conjur the circumstances under which that would occur.

Well, for those who are interested, read on!

It all began yesterday afternoon as I was on my way to pick up my daughter from kindergarten. As I reached the school, which had not yet dismissed the pupils, I thought I heard faint crying. I stopped, looking about. I saw no one on the snow-covered playground, its edges rimmed with the high banks that form there each year when the plows clear the snow from the adjacent area of macadam.

Another mom wasn't far behind me on the sidewalk and she, too, stopped. "Do you hear crying?" she asked. I said yes, but that I couldn't quite pin it down. Somehow it sounded close, yet muffled, and began to get a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

That's when I heard another woman yelling to some crossing guards (children) just coming out of the school. "There's a child stuck in the slide!" she kept yelling. Well, not one to yell when I could act, I tore over to that jungle gym and scaled up there to look in. Sure enough, a small child had taken the slide, not realizing the plows had completed covered over the end of that tube slide with hard-packed snow. He couldn't get up and he couldn't get out the bottom.

The other mom had followed me. The slide was about twelve feet, at least. I said, "Try to hold my feet," and I hung from my toes down into that slide to try to reach him. My worry was he'd been in there for hours and no one had heard him since in the cold the kids in the school don't come out onto the playground for recess where he would have been surely heard.

He looked to be about four, maybe five, had lost his gloves, hat, and one boot in the mound of snow in which he was floundering. I think he had been trying desperately to dig himself out. My first thought was, gotta get that kid out.

But I couldn't reach him even though he sprung up and tried to grab my hand. "Pull me up!" I had to yell. Other parents had joined in. "I've gotta go in," I said, turning to slide feet-first this time. "I'll shove him back up to you."

This I did. I was able to slide past him, then shove him up by the soles of his feet to the other folk waiting up top. The only problem was, then -- I was stuck! I wasn't too worried. I knew I had just come outside and was plenty warm. I could wait. No thoughts of hypothermia for me like I'd feared in the tot.

I tried and tried, but it was like ice in that tube slide -- a narrow yellow slice of pergatory in an otherwise unnotable day. So the other folk went to the bottom of the slide and started diggin' me out by hand through all that packed snow. Embarrasing, as a firefighter, to have committed one of the cardinal sins of rescue work, which is Don't Become a Victim, Yourself!

Well, eventually the worked loose a hole big enough for me to shimmy out. I was covered in snow and ice head to foot and I was really starting to get cold. I looked up. Fifty to a hundred kids, no dismissed from school, had seen the commotion on the playground and now stood ringing the tops of those snowmounds, looking down at me. Applause erupted.

Silly, and yet -- wow. It really drove home the dangers of tube slides. Had that little fella done that an hour later, he likely would have been in that slide overnight, cause the playground would have been abandonned and no one would have heard his cries.

I spoke to the principal later the day about the incident. I stressed the need to have the people who plow remain alert to NOT blocking in the bottom of slides like that. In truth, it could have turned into a tragedy.

No one knows what happened to the little boy. He wasn't a student of the school, as it hadn't yet let out, though it's possible in my mind that he was old enough to have been a morning kindergartener. He ran off after rescued and no one saw what became of him.

Can you imagine letting your four or five year old go to a playground alone? Who were that boy's
parents. There is no way to tel them what took place!

So, let this serve as a warning to people in charge of playgrounds everywhere where even moderate snows accumulate. Surely, this isn't the first time something like this happened in all the world, and it probably won't be the last.

The principal plans to replace the tube slide with a more conventional open variety. He now knows what I have learned the hard (and cold) way:

What happens on playgrounds isn't always all fun and games.

WoW! That was so brave. You probably saved a life today. Wonder what happened to the boy. Hopefully he's not trapped somewher else.

The parents of that little boy probably have no idea how close he came to serious injury or even death.

I say we hereby proclaim you "boomer hero of the day"

smile

Garrie, never even thought about those slides being a danger. Way to go girl!

For those of you who don't know Garrie, she's retired from the fire department. Check out her picture in the photo album.

Did that rescue mode bring back memories?

Well, Dots, I gotta admit, it did take me back -- but not that far! Ha! It's only been about two years since I've been an active firefighter. And other than fighting forest fires in Utah, Idaho and Florida for the government, I was a volunteer, so I never really retired -- just got busy with kids once I made a transition into homeschooling most of them. Seventeen years with the fire service and ten with the ambulance was probably a worthy share of my time devoted to the community, anyway. Let the younger folk take over. I'm ready to do something else (mainly write and jog!).

But it did "take me back in one particular sense. Back in the mid-eighties when I was new to the fireservice, Lititz was big on confined space rescue. We had all the equipment and the training, so when there was a need for confined space rescue in the county, we'd be the ones called in. They've since discontinued that speciality, but as the smallest firefighter, I was almost always one of the ones to "go in" while others manned the equipment.

With confined spaces there isn't room to wear your SCBA (breathing apparatus), so instead you are hooked up to an airline "umbilical" that runs back to a compressor truck. We had little mini air packs on our hip that could give 5 min. of emergency airtime if the hose got snagged, or the compressor failed, etc. -- ostensibly time enough to back out.

For drill we would have a "victim" (fellow firefighter) -- except that unlike what a genuine victim would probably present as, the firefighter had on full turn-out gear. The rescuer had to struggle in tight spaces to rope the "victim" securely and properly, then assist hoisting them out. It was a strenuous hobby! The guys liked me to be victim cause I was smaller and much lighter. In fact, I got to be a practice dummy quite a bit.

Scarriest time was being hauled out an upper story window on someone's shoulder as they maneuvered down a ladder! Even with THAT, it was scarrier still being the "hauler" than the "haulee" cause I was far more mortified of dropping my victim than of being dropped. I can't recall who I carried down that ladder. I wonder if my hubby would recall (we met at the fire dept.).

I was the first female firefighter in this town and among the first in this county and I used to get SO angry at all the ignorant people who used to say things like, "she just joined the fire company to find a man." Ha! Because, of course, I didn't.

Then my husband joined the dept. two years after I did -- so I wound up marryin' a firefighter anyway. He still fights fire. And in fact, my active membership only expired New Years day, cause I finally decided not to renew. But I think I will always be a firefighter at heart.

Ugh. I chatter too much!!

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